News Article: Anti-Spam Law Declared Unconstitutional

[Ehtyar]

The Virginia Supreme Court has declared the state's anti-spam laws violate the 5th amendment.

The Virginia Supreme Court declared the state's anti-spam law unconstitutional Friday and reversed the conviction of a man once considered one of the world's most prolific spammers.

The court unanimously agreed with Jeremy Jaynes' argument that the law violates the free-speech protections of the First Amendment because it does not just restrict commercial e-mails - it restricts other unsolicited messages as well. Most other states also have anti-spam laws, and there is a federal CAN-SPAM Act as well, but those laws apply only to commercial e-mail pitches.

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Ehtyar.

[mouser]

damn it 

[gexecuter]

This sucks!

[Deozaan]

Boo for Virginia! Of course, that's without me having any knowledge of the law. A lot of times when laws are passed they promote one big issue and kind of put in fine print another restriction or law that nobody even knows about so people get all fired up about the big issue and pass it to a law without knowing what other laws/restrictions they've just implemented.

This could be one of those cases.

[mwb1100]

One bright spot is that the court struck down the law because it extended to non-commercial speech, but most anti-spam laws apply only to commercial emails:

the ruling won't have broad repercussions because Virginia is the only state that prohibits noncommercial spam

[app103]

One bright spot is that the court struck down the law because it extended to non-commercial speech, but most anti-spam laws apply only to commercial emails:

the ruling won't have broad repercussions because Virginia is the only state that prohibits noncommercial spam

-mwb1100 (September 14, 2008, 05:43 PM)

This means AOL users can resume forwarding crap to everyone in their address book again. (We all know this had to be the only reason why that law ever applied to non commercial spam to begin with, being that AOL's headquarters are in Virginia. )